For me, being a debut novelist felt similar to being a new mother. First, there was curiosity, like when I was hugely pregnant, and my friends from childbirth class all had their babies. What went on in the delivery room, anyway? Was it really that bad? When would I go in there? And then, it’s your turn, and you’re handed this…baby. Putting your book out there feels a lot like…

I’ll be honest. I don’t like this week’s topic a bit. I have plenty of bad habits, but I’m from the camp that says you should keep your battles with yourself private, and put your best foot forward in life. Which is maybe one of my bad habits. I don’t like to be vulnerable, but when I am, I certainly don’t like to show it. Maybe a career in writing…

Ironically, I am on my way to a desert island today for two weeks! Well, okay, maybe more of a tropical island, but you get the idea. In England, there’s a program called Desert Island Disks on the radio. Every week, a celebrity or cultural figure is interviewed, and asked for a playlist of albums they would take to a desert island. Then, at the end of the program, they’re…

The Washington Post review of The Little Giant of Aberdeen County (my book was in the Washington Post!) temporarily confused me because it started with a discussion of Oprah. Even in the book world, I guess, all roads lead to Oprah. That’s okay. I love Oprah’s book club. I’ve loved it since it started. Remember The Book of Ruth? Remember The House of Sand and Fog, and Drowning Ruth? How…

I guess you could say there are two kinds of books in the world: introverted and extroverted. I’m personally a fan of the introverted genre, and I think that shows in my writing. The novels I like are ruminative, exploratory. They examine a character or a situation for the why and how more than just tell you the what. To wit: Lolita, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment. Or, more recently,…

I totally agree with what everyone’s said this week. There are no easy answers when you write. You shouldn’t do it for the dollars, and the only way to get anything done is to put your butt in the chair and hands on the keyboard. But I wonder if we should debunk ALL the writing myths. For a while, I really thought so. I was a total hardass. I refused…

Basically, there are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who move into a house, and have everything put away and perfect five minutes later (my sister), and the rest of us. We moved a year and a half ago, and we still haven’t hung all our art, if you want to call it that. Instead, our decor is more of a work in progress, but there’s one…

Oh my lord, is it ever lonely writing a novel. I’m talking bleak lonely. No one else on the beach, and the wind howling through the dunes lonely. Just you and your swaybacked horse on the high steppes lonely. See, publishing a novel is collaborative. You have marketing people! Your editor emails you with pretty artwork for your book cover, and the postman keeps ringing the doorbell with boxes of…

I was going to write the standard letter to my younger self (quit trying to lose ten pounds, learn to say no, don’t date the bad boyfriend, etc.), but then I thought what would be really useful for this blog would be a letter to my starry-eyed, fresh-faced, debut self about the truth of being published. So here it goes: The week your novel comes out, everyone you ever knew…

My children are grappling with God these days, partly because they’re at that age, but largely because we just sent them to church camp for a week, NOT because I wanted to indoctrinate them but because: a) it got them out of the house for three hours a day b) it’s a good opportunity to learn some of the Bible stories, foundation of so much Western literature and art, and…